


Dead Man's Party

by cockslut3000



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Angst, Fanart, Fix-It of Sorts, Ghosts, Halloween, High School, Internalized Homophobia, Intricate Rituals, M/M, Paranormal, Party, Period-Typical Homophobia, Pining, Repression, Underage Drinking, based loosely on Paranorman, uhhhhh fucking Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-21
Updated: 2019-10-21
Packaged: 2020-12-27 03:21:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21111827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cockslut3000/pseuds/cockslut3000
Summary: A distant memory from Richie's childhood: The gang goes to a Halloween party, Richie pines after his best friend, and he can see dead people.





	Dead Man's Party

1993

Thinking back on it, they should've known homicidal clowns aren't the only fucked up crazy shit that exists in the world. Not even the only _ paranormal _fucked up crazy shit. 

It's Halloween, and the Losers are on their way to a real live high school party. None of them have ever been to a high school party, with the exception of Bev, who is remarkably popular at her new school. Probably because she’s the new, mysterious girl who smokes cigarettes and doesn't take shit from anyone. Richie always treated her like the outsider in the group, but now he fucking misses her. She’s one of the few people he can talk to seriously without fear of losing his Trashmouth status. Girls just have a wisdom that boys don’t. 

They ride their bikes out towards the Barrens, wheels crunching over dried leaves. Richie inhales the crisp fall air and feels a thrill go through him. He fucking loves Halloween, and he’s about to go to his first party ever. This is gonna be a good night. 

Not everyone feels the same anticipation he does, though.

“Why does this shit have to be in the woods? Who knows what could happen, I can’t believe we’re doing this. A bunch of drunk teenagers in the woods at night on Halloween? Someone’s gonna fucking die tonight,” Eddie protests loudly. 

“Yeah, your mom, without me there to take care of her.” 

“Fuck you!” Eddie kicks the back wheel of Richie’s bike and he almost goes down. He retaliates by giving Eddie a whack to the back of the head and then they both halt their bikes to exchange slaps. 

“Guys, come on, places to be,” Mike calls from up ahead. 

“Are you sure we’re, like, invited to this?” Stan frets. 

“It’s a party in the woods, everyone’s invited, even fuckhead losers like us. No one cares, they just wanna get drunk.” Richie looks at Eddie pointedly. “Which is why we’re going. Right, Eds?”

“Yeah, I already said I’d get drunk with you,” Eddie grumbles. “Shut the fuck up about it.”

Richie grins and kicks off on his bike. They’re almost at the woods when someone calls out behind them.

“Hey, losers, wait up!”

“Bev!” Ben shouts with delight. Richie turns, and sure enough he sees Bev, hurtling towards them on a skateboard.

“Whoa, you can s-skate?” Bill says.

Bev pulls up to them and kicks the board up into her waiting hand. “Yep. Pretty cool, huh?” 

Richie thinks he understands why half his friends seem to be in love with this girl. If any of them are undeserving of their loser status, it’s her. 

“You’re in Derry!” Eddie exclaims, stating the obvious. Richie points this out and Eddie glares at him.

“Yeah, I had to see you freaks on this wondrous night of debauchery. Also my aunt had ‘business’ in town.” She rolls her eyes. Before anyone can ask her to elaborate she hops back onto her board. “Come on, I came here for some revelry and overindulgence!” 

“What the fuck does _ revelry _ mean?” Richie mumbles as the boys follow her into the night. 

Soon the revelrous and overindulgent sounds of a high school party begin to reach their ears and they see the orange glow of a bonfire. They stop at the edge of the trees and park their bikes.

“Okay, guys, m-masks on!” Bill says. This is the genius plan they came up with in case it turns out their classmates decide to find a problem with having losers at their party: don’t get recognized. Eddie and Richie pull on their Frankenstein and Dracula masks, respectively, and give each other a thumbs up that immediately turns into a thumb war. 

“Guys, I didn’t get the memo,” Bev says. They turn to look at her and she whips around to face them dramatically. The boys shriek with laughter. “What? Is there something on my nose?” She feels at her face, which is covered by a werewolf mask. “Oh, oh my god, the transformation is starting! Don’t look at me, I’m hideous!” 

They set out towards the bonfire, Beverly growling and roaring at them all the way. As they approach the group crowded around the fire one of the closest drunk guys spots them. 

“Hey!”

Eddie jumps and discreetly darts behind Richie as the boy comes towards them. Richie recognizes him from last year’s P.E. class. He’s pretty sure the asshole called him a fag a few times in the locker room. 

“You guys bring booze?”

Richie lets out a relieved breath and opens the backpack slung over his shoulder. “Two bottles of vodka, coming right up!” He thinks he hears Eddie gasp behind him and smirks. Prude. 

“Al_ right!” _The guy lets out a primal howl and, hearing it, the whole group gathered around the fire joins in, sounding like a pack of rabid, drunk wolves under a full moon. Wow, turns out all it takes to make people like you is to get them drunk. Richie is gonna remember that one. 

The Losers crowd around the fire, mingled with the classmates that have hated them for years, feeling more lost at the prospect of acceptance than they ever have at being outcasts. 

Richie knows how to fix this. “Ok, guys, let’s get fucking wasted!” He must have said it louder than he thought, because everyone cheers. Everyone is cheering for _ him. _He feels like he’s going crazy. A plastic cup is shoved into his hand and he pours himself some vodka, mixing it with whatever mysterious soda is being passed around. 

He can feel Eddie practically vibrating with tension at his shoulder. “Rich, I’m not really sure about this…” 

Richie pours more soda into his cup and passes it to Eddie. “Here, try this. You won’t taste the alcohol.”

“No, I mean,” Eddie gestures around them, “This.”

Richie places his hands on Eddie’s shoulders and looks at him through the eyeholes of his Frankenstein mask. Frankenstein’s _ monster, _ Eddie’s voice corrects in his head. _ Frankenstein is the man who made the monster. _

“Eds, this will all feel way better once we’re drunk. I promise. None of this high school bullshit matters when you’re drunk.”

He can’t see Eddie’s face enough to know what’s going on his head, but finally he nods. “Okay, give me that. If I’m gonna make it through this I’m gonna have to be _ fucked.” _

Richie whoops and smacks a kiss on the forehead of Eddie’s plastic mask. Eddie groans and shoves him away. He pours himself another drink to replace the one he gave to Eddie and they clink their cups together before downing the liquor.

~

Richie is definitely feeling it. He’s lost track of his friends but he’s having a good fucking time. Since he’s got his own cigarettes people have been bumming them all night, because apparently people smoke more drunk than they normally would sober. On a regular day Richie wouldn’t give these people shit, but if he’s being honest he kind of likes the attention he’s getting. This whole _ being liked _thing is new to him - people even seem to enjoy his shitty jokes. At one point he had a whole group of people crowded around him, listening to his stories and laughing at everything he said. Not even his friends laugh at his jokes that way, they’re all just used to his dirty mouth. People don’t even seem to care who he is; he’s had his mask off for a while, starting to feel uncomfortable with the plastic obstructing his vision and his ability to get absolutely hammered. 

He sits on a log and lights up a cigarette, searching for his friends. He sees Bill and Mike laughing together nearby, but doesn’t see the others anywhere. Where’s Eddie? He was so nervous about tonight and Richie is starting to feel like maybe he should've stuck closer to him, because now he doesn’t know where the hell he is. As he scans the crowd he sees a face that stands out to him, but it’s not Eddie’s. It’s - it’s white, with orange hair and exaggerated, creepy fucking makeup. _ Clown, _his brain screams. Suddenly that face is all he can see. 

_ Richie, _says a voice.

_ Richie, Richie, Richie, don’t touch the other boys. Don’t let them know your secret. _

_ Richie! _

“Richie!”

He feels hands clutching his shoulders and struggles before his eyes focus and he realizes it’s Eddie in front of him, mask off, trying to get his attention. He twists out of his grasp.

_ Don’t touch the other boys. _

Fuck that motherfucking clown. 

His cigarette has burned out and he drops it on the ground at his feet. Eddie crushes it with his toe like he always does, afraid he’ll trigger a forest fire from that tiny little spark. Richie looks up, past Eddie’s worried face, and realizes everyone nearby is looking at him. 

“Rich, are you okay? You were - you were having a panic attack. What the fuck is going on?”

Richie tries to speak and his throat closes up. He coughs and tries again. 

“Clown.”

Eddie pales. He looks around and spots the face. “Oh, Richie… Fuck. It’s just a costume.”

“Yeah, fuck you. I can see that now.” 

People are starting to laugh, but not the way they were laughing earlier. They’re laughing _ at _him. He feels so stupid, of course these assholes don’t like him. Maybe they talked to him and laughed at his jokes after a few drinks, but they also call him a faggot, like, every other day, intentionally loud enough for him to hear as he passes them in the halls. 

He vaguely registers Eddie standing tall to face the crowd. Richie doesn’t know how but Eddie appears so much bigger in this moment than he is in reality.

“What the fuck are you all looking at? You there, what did you just say? Yeah, some people are scared of clowns, asshole, and sometimes clowns try to kill you. They’re still people under the makeup and people can be fucking psychos! Especially if they have to hide behind a fake ass smile! I bet you’re scared of heights, or spiders, or _ butterflies _or some shit like that. Dick. I bet your mom fucking -”

And then everything is moving so fast, and Eddie just got _ punched, _right in his stupid, pretty face. 

Richie’s about to wreak absolute havoc on all these bitches but then he staggers as he tries to stand and him and Eddie end up leaning on each other and the Losers are dragging them away from the crowd and the fire and the chaos. He’s too drunk to fight it so he just lets his friends lead him away, his arm wrapped around Eddie’s shoulders. 

Once they’ve made it a safe distance from the party they stop and inspect Eddie’s face. A bruise is forming across his cheek, but his nose isn’t broken and his eye hasn't swelled. The whole group fusses over him like his mother always does. Richie decides this is the wrong time to make a joke about Eddie’s mother, because Eddie will freak the _ fuck _out at the prospect of his mom seeing him like this. Way more than he did when facing a group of vicious high schoolers just now.

“Ow!” He snaps as Richie’s fingers brush over his skin. Richie ignores him.

“How did it feel?”

“Getting hit? How do you _ think -” _

“Not getting hit. Defending my honor.” 

“Oh, fuck off, you drunk bastard.”

Richie giggles and drapes his arms around Eddie’s neck. “My brave, brave man.”

Eddie squirms and complains but Richie hears the laughter in his voice. The rest of the Losers join in the hug, all wrapped up with Eddie in the middle. 

“You fucking badass,” Bev says. 

“Yeah, drunk Eddie is awesome,” Stan adds, and the others chime in with their agreements. 

Eventually the praise overwhelms Eddie and he manages to extract himself from the cluster of intoxicated teenagers. They continue into the woods, towards the clubhouse. 

“What d- d- what the fuck do we do now?” 

“We could have our own bonfire,” Richie suggests. Eddie shoots him a look and he knows he’s about to hear all about the various hazards of such an endeavor. Hastily, he adds, “in a trash can, so we don’t burn down the forest.”

“Sounds good to me,” Bev agrees. “We’re all too drunk to go home, and there’s still fun to be had.” 

“Yeah, if your idea of fun is getting eaten to death by mosquitoes. They’re attracted to heat and light and they carry all kinds of diseases -”

“Shut up, Eds.” 

For once, Eddie shuts up.

~

They use a rope to haul the big metal trash can out of the clubhouse and then pack it full of sticks and debris. Richie pours some of his leftover vodka over the pile, earning an eye roll from Eddie, but it does the job. The fire flares up quickly and they all huddle around it. The night has cooled down considerably in the past couple of hours, and Richie thinks a bonfire is definitely one of his better ideas. 

The group starts telling scary stories, as is the natural course of action while gathered around a fire in the middle of the woods on the spookiest night of the year. Richie would normally interrupt with his usual jokes and pranks, but he's too buzzed and worn out and doesn't have it in him right now. Instead he leans his head on Eddie’s shoulder and feels his heart thump in his chest as Eddie threads his fingers through Richie's curls. He hopes Eddie can't feel it too. The ugly voice in his head whispers again, _ don't touch the other boys, _but this time Richie shoves it in the back of his mind. He doesn't have to listen to any stupid clown. He just wishes the voice still sounded like It, and not like a fucked up version of his own. 

A while later he opens his eyes and realizes he nodded off for a bit. Ben is midway through a story that sounds like it's either from a really corny crime novel or a really captivating news story. Eddie’s hand is still in Richie's hair, and now he's stroking his head gently. Richie wonders if he's doing it on purpose or if it’s an automatic response. He wants to go back to sleep, because this is really relaxing, but he drank a shit ton and now he really has to pee. He lifts his head and Eddie’s hand disappears as soon as he notices Richie is awake. Richie smiles internally, because he knows that it means the touch was deliberate. 

He stands, a little wobbly from liquor and sleep. "I'll see you guys in a bit, I gotta take a piss." 

He grabs one of the small flashlights Stan was thoughtful enough to bring along and makes his way deeper into the woods. Jesus Christ, there's no better feeling than finally emptying all the alcohol out of one's bladder. When he's done he removes the flashlight from where he held it between his teeth and as he does the light catches on a slight movement in his periphery. 

He practically jumps out of his skin and switches off the flashlight. If there's something out there, he doesn't want to draw attention to himself. 

He's so terrified he can barely move, just listening for any sign of movement in the darkness. Eventually, hearing only the regular forest sounds, he decides he has to do something; he can't just keep standing there all night. 

He curses under his breath. "Okay, Rich, there's nothing there. _ It… _ is dead and gone, and it's just your imagination." Pep talk complete, he switches the light back on. 

Right in front of him stands a clown. Richie lets out an ungodly yelp and promptly passes out. 

~

When Richie comes to there's a concerned face looking down at him - a stranger's face. He sits up, groggy. 

"Hey man, you okay? I didn't mean to scare you." The guy holds up a mask. A _ clown _mask. "Just a costume." 

"Ugh, you're the asshole from the party." 

"To be fair, dude, I didn't think my costume was gonna cause trouble, I just got it from the Party City." He helps Richie to his feet. "Come on, I have something to show you." 

"Why would I go anywhere with you, freak?" 

The guy gives him a cryptic look. "I don't know. I just need someone to see." 

"See what?" 

The guy has already started walking away, and against his better judgement, Richie follows. 

After a while Richie is seriously starting to think the clown is fucking with him and is about to say something when he stops and Richie almost walks right into him. 

"There," he points, and Richie's eyes follow. In the bushes he can sort of make out a shape. He shines his flashlight onto it. 

"Man, what the -" He points the light back at the guy in the clown costume. At least, where he was standing a moment ago. Now there's just emptiness. Richie looks back down at the shape on the ground. Forces himself to look closer. 

He turns tail and runs. 

~

Richie makes it back to the campfire after what seems like an eternity of stumbling through the thick undergrowth of the Barrens. When he finally sees the glow of the fire he uses his last ounce of adrenaline to get to safety as fast as he possibly can, even though he has a really bad stitch in his side from almost ten minutes of nonstop fleeing. 

"Holy shit, guys!" he yells, and collapses to his knees. He hears a few startled gasps before everyone relaxes. 

"Real funny, Rich, how original. You got me, congrats," Stan says. 

It takes Richie a second to realize his friends think he's pranking them. He's gotten himself into a boy-who-cried-wolf situation. He has to wait a moment and catch his breath before he can speak. Maybe he should get into shape. "Guys. I'm serious. There's something out there." 

"What is it, Richie, a s-sasquatch?" 

"I bet it's Eddie’s mom and Richie mistook her for a sasquatch!" Stan receives a handful of dirt in the face for that one. 

For once Richie cannot handle any bickering. "_ Listen up, assholes _! There is something out there and I don't know what but it's killing people and it is coming for us!" He meets Eddie’s eyes, staring back at him in shock. Richie suddenly realizes he's crying and can't stop. 

"I am fucking scared. Scared like I was when…" he can't bring himself to say it. 

Eddie stands up. "Idiots, he's telling the truth. Look at him, he's fucking shaking." Then he completely distracts Richie from the matter at hand by… taking his hand. 

That is, until Richie glances back towards the woods he just emerged from and, at the soft edge of the glow from the fire, can just barely make out the vague shape of a figure. 

"Guys." His voice is barely a whisper now. "Do you see that?" 

They all squint into the darkness, but when they look back at him Richie doesn't find the fear in their eyes that he was expecting. Just confusion, and doubt. 

"See what, Rich?" Bev asks carefully. 

The figure starts to move closer and its form becomes slightly clearer. Richie's heart plunges into his stomach. 

It's not the boy in the clown costume. 

"I'm not fucking kidding. Run." 

As he says it a gust of wind blows through the trees and the fire goes out with a _whoosh. _

They run. 

~

The Losers sit huddled on the floor of the clubhouse, staring up at the trapdoor, terrified something might sneak up on them. They stay completely quiet, for fear of being heard by… whatever is outside. Richie is still gripping Eddie’s hand and can't bring himself to let go. He doesn't _ want _to let go, and he thinks fear is probably a reasonable excuse for physical affection. Eddie doesn't seem to mind, and Richie will take what he can get, even in a fucked up situation like this. 

Finally Beverly breaks the excruciating silence. 

"Christ, I don't know if I can keep coming back here."

Bill turns to her in surprise. "W-w-wha… w-w-" 

Ben finishes for him. "What do you mean, Bev?" 

"I _ mean, _bad things happen in Derry. Every time." 

"But this wasn't supposed to happen. We were supposed to be having fun." 

"That's just it," she says sadly. "It's too unpredictable here. You know I love you guys, but… I just think I'm done with this town." 

There’s another long silence while the boys process this. They all want to argue, but the thing is, no one can blame her. Richie knows if he had the chance to get out of Derry he’d go as far away as he could and never come back. At least, that’s what he tells himself, but a voice in the outer reaches of his mind creeps forward. _ Are you sure about that, Richie? You’d never see him again. _

He sighs. “Aren’t you guys gonna ask me what I saw out there?”

They all look at him. 

“Wasn’t sure if you wanted to talk about it,” Bev says. 

“Yeah,” Eddie agrees. “We can just stay here for the night and leave in the morning once it’s safe. It’ll be safe in the morning, right?” His eyes betray his terror.

Richie’s not sure if it will, but he doesn’t want to make his friends more scared than they already are. “Yeah, we’ll be fine. Um, so here’s the deal.” 

He explains what happened when he left the campfire and saw the clown from the party. When he gets to the part where the clown disappeared, he stops. He can barely bring himself to think it, let alone say it out loud. Eddie’s grasp tightens and Richie uses his free hand to adjust his glasses. 

“It was… his body. The guy in the clown costume. His dead body, all bloody and fucked up.”

“What?” Mike says, not understanding. “Who showed you the clown’s body?”

“He showed me his _ own _body. I looked back up and he was fucking gone.”

“So…” No one seems to get it. 

“It was his _ ghost.” _

There’s a pause and then everyone _ ohs. _

“B-but then who did you s-s-see just now outside?”

Richie swallows. “Someone else. I don’t know.”

“No one else saw it, though. Are you sure there was someone there?” Stan is still skeptical. 

God, Richie never planned to tell anyone what he’s about to tell his friends. It’s a secret he guards almost as closely as… well, his other secret. He takes a deep breath. They have to know.

“So… ever since _ It _died… I’ve been seeing dead people. Ghosts. It only happens in Derry, went I went to Jersey last summer I didn’t see any.” 

"What do they look like?" 

"They just look like people. I can touch them and talk to them and they just seem normal. I don’t know, maybe I could always see them, but I didn’t notice until after It.”

"If they just look normal how did you know they were ghosts?" 

"I figured out that no one else could see them. And… I started seeing people that.” He looks at Bill. “People that I knew were dead."

Bill meets his eyes. Richie nods slowly, and Bill bursts into tears. 

Eddie’s eyes dart between them. "Sorry, what did I miss?" 

Bev looks incredibly sad. "Honey… Richie saw Georgie," she whispers.

They all sit there in shock while Bill just sobs. Bev and Mike, sitting on either side of him, clutch his hands. Finally he calms down enough to speak.

“What was he like?”

Richie shrugs. “Just normal. They’re never scared or in pain. He’s just himself. I play with him sometimes, if no one’s around to see.”

Bill squeezes his eyes shut. “I’m glad s-s-s… s-someone plays with him.” Now Richie feels awful that he said that, because they all know how guilty Bill feels that he let Georgie play alone that day. Die alone.

Stan looks confused. “So the clown was dead? At the party you were really seeing a ghost?”

Eddie frowns. “No, I saw him too, at the party. Which means…” his eyes widen in realization. “Oh, fuck.”

“Yeah. He died _ tonight.” _

“Oh, Jesus Christ, this is not happening.” Eddie finally lets go of Richie’s hand to wrap his arms around his legs and bury his face in his knees. He starts breathing hard and mumbling under his breath.

“Eds, calm down, you’re hyperventilating.” Eddie just squeezes himself tighter into a little ball. “Eddie, come on, look at me, it’s gonna be okay.” Richie grabs his backpack and roots around in the pockets. He used to carry around an extra inhaler for emergencies, and Eddie hasn’t needed it in a while, so it’s probably still here. He fishes until he finds it way at the bottom amongst some empty wrappers. 

Eddie doesn’t have asthma, but right now he’s not breathing properly, so Richie does the only thing he can think of and brings the inhaler to his friend’s lips. After a few puffs Eddie starts breathing steadily again and Richie lets out his own breath. He drops the inhaler and wraps his arms around Eddie, placing a gentle kiss on his forehead that he hopes Eddie will forgive him for when he’s less overwrought with fear. 

“I fucking told you someone would die tonight. Didn’t I tell you!” 

“Yeah, I see ghosts, and you’re a psychic.”

Eddie gasps. “Maybe I am! Maybe -”

Richie rolls his eyes. “No, you’re just paranoid, babe.”

“Well, I was right, wasn’t I!”

They both jump as a crackle resonates throughout the small space. Ben looks up from where he’s bent over the radio in the corner. “Sorry, just thought some music would help. If I could just…” he fiddles with the buttons but all that comes out is a horrible static. “I don’t know why it’s not working, it usually…” The static stops. “Ah, there we go.”

What rings out next is not music, it’s a voice. Richie’s about to nag Ben to switch from whatever news channel he picked when he suddenly recognizes the voice, and he can tell from the looks on everyone’s faces that he’s not the only one. _ It. _

They all sit stock still, listening with dread. 

_ Ohhh Ruth, come here! I want to show you something… Ruthie… _

Another voice, a child’s voice. “Who… who are you? How do you know my name?”

_ I’m your friend! Don’t you want a friend? _

“I have friends.”

_ Are you sure? Do those other kids really like you? Or do they just put up with you because they pity you? _

“They do like me!”

_ No they don’t. They think you’re ugly, and stupid, and annoying. _

The girl is crying now. 

_ But I don’t think so! I like you and I want to be your friend! Your REAL friend! _

“I don’t like you, you’re scary.”

_ No I’m not, I’m just a clown. A funny, happy clown! _ It giggles. _ I’m just a silly little clown! _

Its laughter grows louder and more crazed and then the girl is screaming and then the radio goes silent. Ben messes with it again but it won’t turn back on.

The room goes into panic mode. Everyone is shouting and frenzied and Eddie looks like he’s about to have a heart attack. Richie thinks he understands what’s happening, though, and he raises his voice to be heard over the commotion.

“Wait, guys, I don’t think It’s back. It only comes back every twenty seven years, right? So it can’t be. Sometimes… sometimes ghosts relive their deaths. What if… what if the ghost out there was one of Its victims? And she’s just having a flashback, and somehow she projected it onto our radio wavelengths or whatever the fuck?”

Mike frowns. “That… actually makes sense.”

Eddie balls up his hands into fists. “No, it doesn’t make shit sense! How is she supposed to know how to stick her little flashback into our goddamn radio!” 

“Well, she probably didn’t do it on purpose! She’s a ghost, I don’t think the laws of science really apply to this situation!” Richie knows exactly what her problem is and he hates what he’s gonna have to do to fix it.“I have to go talk to her.”

“Richie, no, what the fuck! She already killed a guy!”

“Yeah, cause he was dressed like the motherfucking clown that murdered her! I can talk to her and make her understand.”

“You’re fucking crazy, no way are you going out there.” Eddie grabs his wrist and holds it in a death grip. 

“Ow, Eddie, let go of me!”

“No! I’m not letting you go out there! Let’s just stay here until she’s gone and we’ll be safe, like you said!”

“I _ lied, _Eds, she’s not going anywhere! Not until she can move on.”

Mike steps between them and puts a hand on top of Eddie’s, where he has his hold on Richie. “I hate to say it but I think Richie’s right.” He gently pries Eddie’s fingers from Richie’s wrist, but Eddie doesn’t let go completely and just lets his fingers slide down into Richie’s hand. 

“Assholes, you’re just gonna let our best friend go out there and get himself killed?”

Richie looks into Eddie’s terrified face and tries to appear as calm as he can, even though he can’t quite believe he’s actually about to do this. “I won’t get myself killed. I’ll be okay, I’ll just talk to her and help her move on. And then we can all get out of here and go home.”

He presses a quick kiss to the back of Eddie’s hand and then turns and climbs out of the trapdoor without looking back. 

~

The fire has been reduced to a pile of glowing embers and Richie belatedly realizes he forgot to bring a flashlight. He can’t go back inside though, because if he does he probably won’t be able to make himself come back out. The moon is just bright enough to see by, so he should be fine on that count. The clearing looks pretty empty to him and he wonders if it was all a dream. That would be embarrassing, if he scared the shit out of his friends for nothing. He could pass it off as an elaborate prank, but they might actually hate him forever.

“Hello?” Richie says softly. There’s no reply, but he gradually begins to feel a presence that’s not his own. He holds his breath and peers around the side of the trash can. Sitting in the grass is a girl who looks to be a few years younger than he was when he encountered It. She’s crying into her hands and he can’t tell if she’s noticed him. 

“Hey,” he says gently, trying not to spook her. (How ironic, the concept of him spooking a ghost.) 

She looks up and Richie almost expects her eyes to glow yellow, but they’re just regular, scared kid eyes. 

“Who are you?” She asks warily.

“I’m Richie. You’re Ruth, right?” He kneels in front of her, trying not to show how afraid he is. No kid wants to feel like a monster. 

“You can see me? No one ever sees me.”

“I can see things other people can’t.”

“Did you see the clown?”

Richie isn’t sure if she’s talking about Pennywise or the guy in the costume, but he nods anyway. “Yeah, I did. What an ugly bastard, right?” 

She actually smiles at that. Richie relaxes a little. Okay, she’s just a kid, he can talk to kids. He can do this. He just has to be careful not to trigger her and cause her to lash out again. 

“You’re not the only one who got hurt by that clown. He tried to kill me and my friends, so I sort of get how you feel.” He doesn’t bring up the fact that Ruth is dead; he isn’t sure if she knows. 

“Really? How did you get away?”

“He feeds on fear, that’s why he shows you the things you’re the most scared of. We had to stop being scared.” 

“What did he use to scare you?”

Richie closes his eyes. _ Don’t touch the other boys. _He opens them again.

“I was already scared of clowns, before I saw It.”

“That’s too easy.”

“Seriously?”

“Come on. What are you really scared of, Richie?”

This kid is actually really smart, way smarter than he was at that age (and probably smarter than he is now, he’ll admit.) Richie knows he has to be honest with her so that she’ll trust him. He sighs and sits down in front of her, crossing his legs.

“He knows things about you, things you don’t even know about yourself. He made me scared of who I was before I even knew who I was.” He takes a deep breath and says what he’s never been able to say out loud before, and won’t end up saying again for many years. “He knew that… I like boys.” 

Ruth scrunches up her nose in confusion. “What’s so scary about that? I like boys.”

“Yeah, but you’re a girl. You’re not supposed to like boys if you’re a boy. People in this town would hurt me, even kill me if they knew.” 

“Oh. That’s not fair.”

“Yeah, but life isn’t fair. I’m used to it.” 

“You shouldn’t have to be. You should leave.”

“I want to, but… there’s people here that I love.”

She leans forward, eyes wide with interest. “A boy?”

Oh, god, now he’s talking about his nonexistent love life with an adolescent ghost girl. He still isn’t a hundred percent sure he isn’t dreaming. “Yeah, yeah, a boy. My best friend.” 

She squeals with glee and he jumps. This is not where he thought this conversation would go. “Are you gonna tell him?”

“Of course not. Did you not hear the part about me being _ killed?” _

Ruth scoffs. “He’s your friend, he won’t kill you!”

“Ha! I wouldn’t be so sure about that. He’s feisty.” 

“You’re still scared, aren’t you? You’re free from the clown but nothing’s changed.”

Richie doesn’t know how to respond to that, so he deflects. “What about you, what are you still scared of? Why are you here?” 

Ruth sighs and looks at her hands. Richie squints and thinks he can see bloodstains, but it’s dark enough that he could be imagining it. “I’m scared of the clown. I killed him, but it didn’t fix anything.”

Richie won’t point out that the clown she killed wasn’t what she thought it was. She doesn’t need that guilt on top of everything else. “Killing never fixes anything. You have to stop being scared. That’s the only way to beat It. No matter how many times you kill the clown he always comes back as long as you have fear to give him. You just have to make sure you don’t have what he needs, and then he can’t take it from you.”

Richie isn’t sure he’s making much sense but then he sees the moment his words hit and Ruth begins to blur around the edges. She whispers, “I think I understand now. Thanks, Richie,” and then she’s gone, leaving him sitting all alone in the dark. 

He should probably go inside and tell his friends it’s over, but he’s feeling… _ things _, so he curls up on the ground and just cries. He weeps and weeps for what seems like hours until he feels like he’s fed the grass with all the water from his body, and then he wipes his face, brushes off his clothes, and heads back towards the clubhouse. 

“It’s done,” he says into the trapdoor, and then Eddie is climbing out and throwing himself into Richie’s arms and everything is okay again. 

2016

Eddie is dead, and nothing is okay.

After they kill It, once and for all, Richie waits. Waits for Eddie to wake up, to be hurt but alive. Then, when he finally accepts the fact that Eddie isn’t alive, that there’s no way he could survive being fucking impaled straight through the torso, he still waits. He isn’t sure why he keeps waiting, and the others clearly think he’s in denial, but he knows there’s something about this whole situation that could fix everything, could make everything better.

Then he remembers. 

He’s finally given up hope, packed up and set out on the long drive back to LA, when he passes Bill’s old house and sees a flash of yellow. He stops his car right in the middle of the road and gets out, and there’s Georgie, in his tiny raincoat, playing with his little paper boat. Georgie, who’s been dead for 27 years. 

“Hey, Richie!” Georgie says, like it was just yesterday that he last saw him. 

Richie is so shocked that he doesn’t know what to do, so he just waves like everything’s normal. “Hey, Georgie. What’s up?”

“Look at the boat Billy made me, isn’t she _ so _ cool?” And then he’s running off down the street, leaving Richie to deal with the memories that suddenly flood back all at once. 

The dead are never quite dead in Derry. 

So he stays. 

He searches all over town, visiting all their old haunts. He frequently sleeps in the clubhouse, even though he has a room in town. It’s dirty and full of spiders and he’s a little too big now to sleep comfortably in the old hammock, but he doesn’t want to risk missing Eddie if that’s where he decides to show up. 

He’s in a weird place in his life. He’s famous enough that he doesn’t have to worry about getting fired permanently, and he’s financially stable enough that he doesn’t have to get another job to support himself in Derry. He’s also grieving at the same time that he’s waiting for Eddie to come back, because his friend is _ dead _ and he’s not _ here, _and even though Richie plans to see him again, he fucking misses him and so he allows himself to mourn him. The last time he went this long without seeing Eddie he didn’t get the chance to grieve, so he grieves. His grief makes up for three decades of missing him without knowing he missed him. 

He’s already reminded his friends of the fact that he can see Derry’s dead, so they don’t question why he’s still here when the rest of them have moved on, but he can tell they’re concerned anyway. He can tell they doubt that Eddie will even show up at all. 

Because that’s a possibility. The dead don’t always stick around, it’s only the ones that have something keeping them there. Richie knows this, and he knows he’s being selfish but he doesn’t allow himself to even consider that Eddie has moved on. That would mean Eddie has moved on from _ him, _and Richie just doesn’t think that’s true. 

He’s not completely naive, and he knows what they had when they were kids. He knows Eddie isn’t - wasn’t - happy in his marriage. Maybe he stopped feeling what Richie still feels, but Richie can’t fucking let him go yet. 

So he stays.

~

It’s been three months and Richie doesn’t think Eddie is coming back anymore.

He’s looked everywhere he can think of. He almost got arrested breaking into Eddie’s old house, but it’s not his fault the new owners wouldn’t just let him in when he knocked on the front door. He even tried to climb through the wreckage of the Neibolt house to see if he could find Eddie’s body, but since it was basically a sinkhole after collapsing the stupid fucking town filled it in. The mayor was definitely close to having him committed after he went and begged them to dig it back up just so he could find a body at the bottom of a well. 

He’s starting to think he really is insane and maybe this whole thing was just some bullshit his mind conjured to cope with losing the love of his life. Granted, drinking every day probably isn’t helping his state of mind. 

He’s leaving again. He’s going to get as far away from this town as he possibly can and try his best to forget what happened here. He thinks he can do it, even though the others haven’t forgotten. He doesn’t know how the fuck he can deal with any of this if he doesn’t forget. Everyone else is relieved that they remember this time around, relieved that they finally remember the good times, but for Richie the good times come hand in hand with the worst pain he’s ever felt.

And the rest of them all had something to go back to. 

Richie has nothing anymore. His career, his house, his life... none of it means anything anymore. If he were anyone else he’d probably be thinking about dying, but he knows what can happen to the dead if they have leftover baggage, and he has more than he can carry. So he hopes to god that he’ll forget. 

First, though, he needs to say goodbye. 

He pulls up to the old bridge and parks his car on the side of the road. He gets out and finds the place where he carved his and Eddie’s initials, crouching in front of it. 

"Hey, Eddie. I miss you. What we had… it was different than with anyone else. We fit so fucking well together, Eds, all these years it felt like a hole in my chest. I could feel that something huge was missing, I just didn't know what. Maybe if I had been brave, a long time ago, we never would've separated and forgot each other." He sighs and traces his fingers over the letter _ E. _"It could have been so different." If he hadn't been so fucking repressed for the past thirty years of his life. 

"You're braver than you think, Rich."

Richie stands up so fast he almost falls right down again. Eddie puts out a hand to steady him. 

"_ Jeeesus _Christ!" 

"Not quite, but I do relate. Has it been three days yet?" 

Richie gets over his initial shock and engulfs Eddie in a bone crushing hug. “It’s been a hell of a lot more than three days, fucker. What took you so long?”

“I dunno, I just got here,” Eddie says into his shoulder. “Maybe you weren’t ready yet.”

“What? I’ve been searching for you for months.”

“Maybe you weren’t ready for what you’d find.”

Richie pulls away and looks at him. “Why’s that?”

“Because I’m dead, Rich.”

“Yeah, I know that! So what?”

“So… you needed time to grieve. I know you, if I showed up right away you’d just pretend like nothing happened.”

“Are you saying you _ did _wait this long on purpose?”

“No! I mean, not on purpose. I just came when I felt like I needed to. Looks like I was just in time. You saying goodbye, Rich?” He gestures at the carving. 

R + E, it couldn’t be any more obvious, but Richie hasn’t acknowledged his feelings out loud in decades so he doesn’t have the proper words prepared for this situation. He wasn’t expecting to find Eddie _ here, _ and he didn’t think he’d ever have to explain his stupid middle school pining. He was just planning to let Eddie think he fell in love when they were older, like normal people. It’s fucking embarrassing to still be in love with your childhood crush when you’re _ forty. _

Eddie is watching him and Richie gets the sense that he can see straight into his mind. He really needs to guard his thoughts better. 

“It’s okay, Rich, I’ve known you carved that since we were, like, fourteen. We biked over this bridge all the time, and you were always _ looking _at it. Didn’t take a genius.” 

Richie is about to make some lame joke about how Eddie’s no genius but then Eddie steps closer and puts a hand on Richie’s cheek and Richie shuts the fuck up. 

Eddie kisses him, and the world is right again. 

Fin

**Author's Note:**

> Art is mine, you can find me on tumblr @ maldecorum!


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